No coy Braff puns here, just a grateful “holy shit” and a pause to write things down before I get back to listening to this fucking record. Example: “One would think Queen Amidala would be used to phantom limbs after her honeymoon with Anakin!! (snort)” Not funny, although I’ll take responsibility for that’n. These jokes don’t make sense in any context anymore, except as our continued cultural twitches, the stunned aftershock of realizing that the Shins, who should logically be the most popular band in the world, are poised to become the most popular band in the world. Okay, not like U2 or whatever, but still: popular. Listened to by middle school students, on-the-cover of Rolling Stone popular. Stranger things have happened. But this development fucks with our conception of the Shins’ first two records, which sound like brilliant pop albums that should never, ever get popular, should be handed among friends with the knowing admonition, “You’re going to fucking love these guys,” because everybody does fucking love these guys when they get a chance to hear them (except Mark Abraham, who sucks), and, thanks to Natalie Portman, now almost everybody has. Heard them, that is.

So, here’s what “Phantom Limb,” the first single from Wincing the Night Away, sounds like: the Shins, only even more popular. No one’s “selling out,” bloggers; this is still world-weary country pop, James Mercer coos his wordless Carl Newman chorus over buzzing bass, simple chiming chord changes, and a warbling guitar solo sends the song home. The track’s crescendo is, like most Shins crescendos, built into the framework of the song, the logical culmination of the song’s elements, and the production here (long the most uncertain aspect of the new record) is an able compromise between atmospheric Oh, Inverted World (2001) and crystalline triumph Chutes Too Narrow (2003). Mercer’s lyrics continue to explore complex, universal sentiments through impossibly specific imagery. “Phantom Limb” is, in short, everything we’ve come to like about the Shins, with one careful caveat: those prickly edges, those jabs into self-conscious quirkiness, have been sanded clean. This vitamin tastes like candy.

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